Lost ghost story by 'Dracula' author Bram Stoker unearthed in Dublin

The Manila Times

Lost ghost story by 'Dracula' author Bram Stoker unearthed in Dublin  A short story by Bram Stoker, the legendary author of "Dracula," has been unearthed by a lifelong enthusiast in Dublin who stumbled upon the work browsing in a library archive while recovering from medical treatment for deafness. Titled "Gibbet Hill," the story was uncovered by Brian Cleary and had remained undocumented for more than 130 years. "I was sitting there looking at the screen wondering: 'Am I the only living person to have read this?'" he says. The rare find is now celebrated for the first time at an exhibition in the Irish capital Dublin.  AFP VIDEO  Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe  Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net    Follow us:  Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook  Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram  Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter  DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion    Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital  Sign up to our newsletters: https://tmt.ph/newsletters   Check out our Podcasts:  Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify  Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts  Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic  Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer  Tune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein   #themanilatimes #worldnews #haloween #dracula

Transcript

00:00The fog, which had been heavy in London when I left on this mid-October morning, extended even to Hazelmere.

00:10When I left the Royal Huts Inn on the top of Hind Head in order to visit the Devil's Punchbowl...

00:19So it was really a consequence of deafness that all of this resulted from.

00:30I was doing archival research to pass the time in the National Library of Ireland and

00:36during that process, which took me several weeks,

00:40I found an advert for this story and I read the words Gibbett Hill

00:44and I knew that that wasn't a Bram Stoker story that I'd ever heard of in any of the biographies or bibliographies and

00:50I was just astounded, flabbergasted. I couldn't believe it that I was potentially looking at a lost ghost story from Bram Stoker,

00:58especially a lost story from Bram Stoker around the time he was writing Dracula and that had elements of Dracula in it.

01:04So I was sitting there looking at the screen,

01:07wondering, you know, am I the only living person to have read this or has somebody else found it and they've been sitting on it?

01:12It was just an incredible experience and it's quite surreal now to be in, you know,

01:18Casino Merino, which is an opulent old building a few hundred meters from where Bram was born

01:24and

01:25standing beside a painting inspired by three of the characters from the story. So after I found it, I

01:33went with the transcription to an artist colleague, Paul McKinley, and

01:38we felt that we could do good work with this, that it could support a charity cause and that, you know,

01:44this could ultimately become a beautiful publication.

01:47We needed to verify the story with a Stoker expert. So we went to Paul Murray, who's

01:52my favorite of the Stoker biographers, and

01:55up to that point, I'd done extensive literature searches to see was there any evidence of it and I couldn't find any trace and

02:04Paul Murray confirmed that this wasn't a known story from Bram and that

02:09it had, in fact, been lost and it had sat in the archives for over 130 years.

02:14Gibraltar is very significant in terms of Bram Stoker's development as a writer.

02:19It is published in 1890 and that's the year that Bram Stoker makes his first notes for writing Dracula.

02:26A very long evolution from the time Bram was a young writer in Dublin and

02:31I see Gibbett Hill as a way station on that route between the younger Bram and the Bram who will publish Dracula in

02:391897. As an artist, I'm always looking for a story or a narrative that I hang all my work about.

02:45When Brian sent me the story of Gibbett Hill, there was so much I could work with and there was so much

02:54stories within the stories that I could use as jumping-off periods.

02:58This story hadn't been read for 130 years. So I was making

03:02new images, new content for an old story. So I was almost

03:08coming at it fresh, coming at it anew, making something new or something that's been buried for so long.

03:15You

Category

Transcript

Recommended